Sony clarifies that the PS3-games-on-PS4 issue hasn't been cleared up yet.

PS4's interface is heavy on social integration, and its network service will allow players to play for their friends in difficult parts of the game.

Andrew Cunningham

Sony revealed a few more choice details about its upcoming PlayStation 4 at a roundtable discussion with Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide Studios, that took place Thursday morning. Among Yoshida’s interesting tidbits were that Sony hasn’t decided whether downloaded PS3 games will be portable to the PS4, that 4K games are not in the cards for the system, and that he'd like to see a more expanded downloadable app store on PSN.

Immediately after Sony’s PS4 announcement, the press latched on to questions over whether Sony would allow games purchased through the PlayStation Network on PS3 to carry over to PS4, either through a direct transfer or through its Gaikai-powered cloud service (the company has already announced that PS3 discs will not work natively on the new system). At first Sony said no, and then seemed to say it didn’t know if such a thing would be possible. At the roundtable Ars attended, Yoshida stated that “we are working on service plans and haven’t decided.” It seems Sony knows there are feasible ways of achieving this kind of content transfer, but it hasn’t yet decided if it’s a worthwhile pursuit.

Enlarge/ Sony briefly touched on a stereo camera, the PS4 Eye, right, that will work with the new console.

When questioned about the PS4's newly announced 3D stereo camera, the PS4 Eye, Yoshida wouldn't confirm whether the peripheral will be included in the box with the PS4 or not. He did note that face tracking will be “more robust” on the PS4, however, and that the Eye will be able to “use one camera for video streaming” while still tracking players' movements for gameplay.

Yoshida also touched on 4K support for the PS4, notably mentioning that the console will not support games rendered at native 4K resolutions. The PS4 will be able to process and output 4K content like photos or digital video files to a 4K TV, but games rendered at those ultra-high resolutions are apparently still a generation beyond the PS4.

In the same vein, Sony appears to be leaving 3D behind with the PS4, as it did at this year's CES with its TVs. “A couple years ago, [stereoscopic 3D] was a big thing," Yoshida said. "We like what we can do on the PS3 with 3D, [but] all the companies have shifted focus from 3DTV to something else.”

Yoshida would not speak to Sony’s decision to go with AMD as the manufacturer of the internal processors for its next system beyond platitudes. “AMD is great!” Yoshida said, before going on to express confidence that the company would be able to produce chips for the life of the PS4 (which, given the longevity of the PS3, could be quite a few years).

Enlarge/ Gaikai will allow customers to stream content, including games. Less importantly, it allows for "remote play" of a PS4 game on a PS Vita, which is all Sony was prepared to talk about.

Questions about streaming service Gaikai, and how many of its features would be available when the PS4 launches this holiday, went unanswered. Yoshida did say he expected that Remote Play capabilities between the PS4 and a Vita on the same wireless network will be working at launch. “I’ll be heartbroken if it doesn’t,” Yoshida said.

The PS4’s network will support several more complicated online services, such as the ability to stream one’s gameplay or reach through Internetspace and take control of a friend’s game. It's not yet clear whether those services will need a subscription or not. Yoshida wouldn't discuss whether the structure for PSN—where many basic services are free and bonus features come with a $50/year PlayStation Plus account—would be continued on the new system, or how services would be divided between free and paying users.

When asked if the PS4 might ever take a more App Store-like approach to game distribution (with fewer hurdles and easier access for a wider array of developers), Yoshida said, “Personally, I’d like to see that happen… that’s the ultimate form of publishing. On the console side, PS3 and PS Vita still treat publishing like the disc based model,” he said, implying that he thinks this state of affairs could be improved.

Throughout its PS4 presentation, Sony emphasized how closely it worked with game developers and design studios in designing and engineering the console. According to a separate roundtable of developers, the new Dual Shock controller that was unveiled at the event may have been a particular point of contention.

“We had weekly, sometimes biweekly calls on specs, but also the controller,” said Herman Hulst, managing director of Guerilla Games, which is developing the upcoming Killzone Shadowfall. “Everybody gets to fight for something.” Matt Southern, the head of Evolution Studios which is creating DriveClub for the PS4, noted that the controller design debates had “so many diverse voices… each with the objective to get what they wanted from the controller.”

I used to have my PSP set up for remote play to my PS3 when i was riding the bus using my phone for a signal. Why is the Vita and PS4 capable of remote play only on the same wireless network?

And if you are in the same house, what good is that anyway? Why not just play it on the PS4?

While I'm not sure why they would remove functionality that existed between the ps3 and psp, there are a lot of reasons why you would want to be able to play a ps4 game wirelessly; relinquishing the big screen to the wife or kids while still enjoying your games is the big one.

There's certainly a way game portability COULD work, even with the games in the cloud: have the user pop his game disc in to the drive, then read the disc to see what game it is; then you simply make that game available to play via the streaming service.

It's sounds as if the new arm chip could be used to play music in the background while gaming. If so I hope they do go through with the app model so I can use spotify while gaming. Some game soundtracks are good, but sometimes I would rather listen to my own music. It would be terrible if they limit that type of functionality to their own music unlimited service. Not surprising, but terrible.

I used to have my PSP set up for remote play to my PS3 when i was riding the bus using my phone for a signal. Why is the Vita and PS4 capable of remote play only on the same wireless network?

And if you are in the same house, what good is that anyway? Why not just play it on the PS4?

While I'm not sure why they would remove functionality that existed between the ps3 and psp, there are a lot of reasons why you would want to be able to play a ps4 game wirelessly; relinquishing the big screen to the wife or kids while still enjoying your games is the big one.

I can see that. Guess I didn't think to hard before I posted. Nor did i really think about toilet gaming or actual sunlight while gaming. However, i don't recognize the WiiU as competition, i find the Wii and WiiU gimmicky and less than optimal.

I'm not quite sure I understand how this streaming gaming thing is supposed to work. It seems like there would be an awful lot of lag, a least if it works how I'm thinking - each frame is rendered in 'the cloud' and streamed to the home screen, followed by input from the gamer, which then has to go back to the cloud and processed before the next frame can be rendered and sent back to the home screen again.

Lag can already be an issue in multiplayer gaming, but now it seems like there will be twice as much, or do I have a fundamental misunderstanding of how this works?

Also, not sure how GaiKai's business model worked previously, but a flat monthly subscription to be able to play any game you want from the library as long as you keep the subscription active would be cool.

I used to have my PSP set up for remote play to my PS3 when i was riding the bus using my phone for a signal. Why is the Vita and PS4 capable of remote play only on the same wireless network?

And if you are in the same house, what good is that anyway? Why not just play it on the PS4?

While I'm not sure why they would remove functionality that existed between the ps3 and psp, there are a lot of reasons why you would want to be able to play a ps4 game wirelessly; relinquishing the big screen to the wife or kids while still enjoying your games is the big one.

I wish you could replace the standard controller with a Vita. for games like madden where you can view and pick plays (for those of us who haven't remembered then all and have a bunch of audibles set) this makes prefect sense. show individual plays on the controller. at the same time, this kind of takes away the gimmick of the Wii U (realizing a gave can't depths in its presence, buy bonus features could be built into the game).

I set my expectations appropriately - knowing it would be a cold day in hell if they chose to support PS2 or prior software on the PS4, but the fact that Sony doesn't seem to consider even PS3 content transfer a priority is a severe disappointment.

Transferring the account information is a trivial exercise, I imagine the issue is the Cell architecture that made the prior system revolutionary yet notoriously hard to code on. Porting or emulating that content is likely a technical hurdle considering the specs of the new machine.

So why not take a page from the past and include the old cell hardware to preserve everyone's content investment? It should be rather cheap to fab after so long.

So I'm supposed to have 3 different Playstations stacked on top of each other? Thanks, but no thanks.

Hey Microsoft, you're last to the party, now's your chance to go for gold. Offer free digital Xbox ports for PS3 disks and the masses will beat down your door. Or you could just be jerks and block used games.

There's certainly a way game portability COULD work, even with the games in the cloud: have the user pop his game disc in to the drive, then read the disc to see what game it is; then you simply make that game available to play via the streaming service.

This is what i was talking about with my PS3 to PSP. I popped in my PS1 games into my PS3, fired up my PSP and used remote play to give my old RPGs another go. It worked at home and in the bus. I streamed the games across the country while on vacation. It was a little laggy, but it didn't matter since i was playing turn based RPGs. I haven't tried it in a while, ill have to see if it still works.

The article states the PS4 to Vita works while on the same wifi network. So im saying that sucks when the last gen hardware had better portability.

Maybe they dropped it because nobody can figure out how to forward a port on their router...

I set my expectations appropriately - knowing it would be a cold day in hell if they chose to support PS2 or prior software on the PS4, but the fact that Sony doesn't seem to consider even PS3 content transfer a priority is a severe disappointment.

Transferring the account information is a trivial exercise, I imagine the issue is the Cell architecture that made the prior system revolutionary yet notoriously hard to code on. Porting or emulating that content is likely a technical hurdle considering the specs of the new machine.

So why not take a page from the past and include the old cell hardware to preserve everyone's content investment? It should be rather cheap to fab after so long.

So I'm supposed to have 3 different Playstations stacked on top of each other? Thanks, but no thanks.

Hey Microsoft, you're last to the party, now's your chance to go for gold. Offer free digital Xbox ports for PS3 disks and the masses will beat down your door. Or you could just be jerks and block used games.

The Cell is probably still too pricey to include, plus it would make for a complicated motherboard design and likely hurt in terms of power draw.

Given the strength of the new hardware though it seems like it should be perfectly capable of emulating PS2 and PS1 games, but why offer that when they can find a way to charge people to redownload them.

Given that AMD is now fabless after cutting ties with Global Foundries, how would AMD be able to produce the chips throughout the console's lifetime? Woudn't they be in charge of initial designs with licensing so the chips can be manufactured by another company? Possibly Advanced Technology Investment Company?

There's certainly a way game portability COULD work, even with the games in the cloud: have the user pop his game disc in to the drive, then read the disc to see what game it is; then you simply make that game available to play via the streaming service.

This is what i was talking about with my PS3 to PSP. I popped in my PS1 games into my PS3, fired up my PSP and used remote play to give my old RPGs another go. It worked at home and in the bus. I streamed the games across the country while on vacation. It was a little laggy, but it didn't matter since i was playing turn based RPGs. I haven't tried it in a while, ill have to see if it still works.

The article states the PS4 to Vita works while on the same wifi network. So im saying that sucks when the last gen hardware had better portability.

Maybe they dropped it because nobody can figure out how to forward a port on their router...

The goal is zero lag. Part of the problem with remote play as it stands now is the lag. I couldn't even play CTR on the lowest settings on my home network with a Vita, it was awful. Sure it's fine for TB RPGs but it's pretty bad for any other game. It still works between PS3 and Vita or PSP. You can even play God Of War 1 or 2 on the Vita now and it's almost playable.

Why is it always 'holiday'? Aren't Americans allowed to say Christmas any more?

That annoys the hell out of me, too. And I'm not the slightest bit religious. But that "holiday" season all these companies get so amped up for every year is primarily and OVERWHELMINGLY supported by Christmas.

I took a chance and bought some AMD stock today as a gamble hoping that it will go up in the future because of design wins for the PS4 and upcoming Microsoft next XBox. Hope my bad luck with stocks don't jinx Sony and AMD.

Why is it always 'holiday'? Aren't Americans allowed to say Christmas any more?

That annoys the hell out of me, too. And I'm not the slightest bit religious. But that "holiday" season all these companies get so amped up for every year is primarily and OVERWHELMINGLY supported by Christmas.

The Holiday Buying Season stopped being about Christmas a long time ago. People don't line up around the block at 3am on Black Friday to buy a 60" flatscreen so they can put it under the Christmas tree. Christmas sales were the original catalyst, but post- (and now pre-) Thanksgiving sales have become a self-perpetuating phenomenon.

It's sounds as if the new arm chip could be used to play music in the background while gaming. If so I hope they do go through with the app model so I can use spotify while gaming. Some game soundtracks are good, but sometimes I would rather listen to my own music. It would be terrible if they limit that type of functionality to their own music unlimited service. Not surprising, but terrible.

If this 8 core CPU can't play a game and a music app at the same time, all by itself, then both MS and Sony chose extremely poorly this generation.

I suspect it's going to be a while, if ever, before any games need all 8 cores.

I'm relatively impressed by this thing. No backwards compatibility means that I'm not going to be done with my PS3 until it finally dies. But, once that happens, and if when it happens there's reasonable replacements to my old games, e.g. I turn in my old games to GS and get a "PS4" card to get some downloaded games instead of carting around discs, I gotta admit it's somewhat appealing.

I'm not quite sure I understand how this streaming gaming thing is supposed to work. It seems like there would be an awful lot of lag, a least if it works how I'm thinking - each frame is rendered in 'the cloud' and streamed to the home screen, followed by input from the gamer, which then has to go back to the cloud and processed before the next frame can be rendered and sent back to the home screen again.

The lag issue kinda depends on the game - an FPS is hard to tolerate with even wireless mouse lag, but a button masher or RPG would be reasonable.

One of the interesting possibilities with a stream service to buy a new game and start playing it RIGHT AWAY, then let the game download after your first session is done. The cloud save flips over to your now local copy of the game, and you play locally from now on. If you want to pop into the game a bit at your friend's house, then you could log on his console for a streamed session, trade a few hats/hits, and leave the full 50GB download out of it.

I used to have my PSP set up for remote play to my PS3 when i was riding the bus using my phone for a signal. Why is the Vita and PS4 capable of remote play only on the same wireless network?

And if you are in the same house, what good is that anyway? Why not just play it on the PS4?

From the article:"Yoshida did say he expected that Remote Play capabilities between the PS4 and a Vita on the same wireless network will be working at launch."

To be fair, it only mentioned that Remote Play on wireless networks will be available at launch. It doesn't mention if they would or wouldn't add the feature to use Remote Play over the internet in the future.

Looks to me that blu-ray player is not in the plans for PS4. Oh well, i will skip this and just keep my PS3. Blu-ray was the feature that makes me buy a PS3, of course i play games and use tv stream services as well. The social feature in the PS4 does not seen to be important, at least for me. Game stream seen to be the only way that Sony wants to distribute their games in PS4, if this is true then i am not interested. I do not have a 30mb internet connection to download 10 or 20GB game. Not everybody can afford or have access to super high speed internet. That will be a heart breaker deal for me.

Looks to me that blu-ray player is not in the plans for PS4. Oh well, i will skip this and just keep my PS3. Blu-ray was the feature that makes me buy a PS3, of course i play games and use tv stream services as well. The social feature in the PS4 does not seen to be important, at least for me. Game stream seen to be the only way that Sony wants to distribute their games in PS4, if this is true then i am not interested. I do not have a 30mb internet connection to download 10 or 20GB game. Not everybody can afford or have access to super high speed internet. That will be a heart breaker deal for me.

There's no alternative to BluRay discs except for cartridges that Sony could go with for media so it will have to be a BluRay reader in the console.

They already have the software for playing BluRays in the PS3, porting it over to the PS4 shouldn't be very hard - I would be very surprised if it requires more than the PPC core and the video decoder on the PS3 and the PS4 will definitely have video decoding capabilities (it'll most likely even have a dedicated video encoder because of the streaming capabilities).

Looks to me that blu-ray player is not in the plans for PS4. Oh well, i will skip this and just keep my PS3. Blu-ray was the feature that makes me buy a PS3, of course i play games and use tv stream services as well. The social feature in the PS4 does not seen to be important, at least for me. Game stream seen to be the only way that Sony wants to distribute their games in PS4, if this is true then i am not interested. I do not have a 30mb internet connection to download 10 or 20GB game. Not everybody can afford or have access to super high speed internet. That will be a heart breaker deal for me.